


the nigerian job

by bellamysblakes (puddingandpie)



Category: Leverage, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puddingandpie/pseuds/bellamysblakes
Summary: When he was working for the government, he was just the man in charge. He knew how to direct people around, he knew how to coordinate them in order to achieve the best possible result. What he didn’t know was how to get out in the field and do it himself. He had lost that ability a long time ago.All that meant was that he needed a team.The law dictated that this was a crime, even if Waverly didn’t necessarily agree. So in order to pull off a perfect crime, you needed criminals, and you needed good ones.He would only need three.or; the leverage au you never knew you wanted told in two cons





	the nigerian job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heroic_pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroic_pants/gifts).



> merry christmas min!  
> you’ve been talking about this au for about as long as i’ve known you, so i hope ive done it justice  
> lots of love, your secret santa (although you can probably guess who i am by now)

He’s sitting in a bar. Dingy, paint peeling at the point where the the wall meets the skirting on the floor, he is sitting in a bar in a corner of the airport, sipping at a tumbler of whiskey and waiting his flight to be called. The alcohol doesn’t burn as much as it goes down, not as much as it used to. 

What he’s not expecting is the man who comes up and sits down on the bar stool next to him and orders them both a round. 

“Can I help you?”

“You’re Alexander Waverly, aren’t you?”

He looks around at the man, assesses him up and down. He’s dressed in a suit, which upon first glance would seem plain and unassuming, but Waverly has spent his entire life looking for something beyond plain and unassuming, so the Egyptian cotton and the perfect fit that screams bespoke do not slip his notice. 

The fact that he knows his name as well means that he has done his research, and there are only a few people in the world who would have access to that sort of information.

“Can I help you?” he repeats, accepting the glass and swirling the whiskey around in it. The man turns around on his chair so that he is facing Waverly, looking at him up and down again.

“I would like to offer you a job.”

He takes another sip and tries to ignore the way that his stomach leaps at the prospect of doing something more exciting than the desk job he now works at, the boring 9-5 which is the structure which his daily routine has been formulated around.

He decides against it anyway. “I’m retired.”

The man shoots him a look.

“You have the itch. I can see it all over you.” Waverly just raises an eyebrow, waiting for the man to elaborate. “You’re itching to be back in the game, to feel that rush that you can only ever get in a life or death situation.”

“I’m retired. I don’t do that anymore.” The words taste bitter on the end of his tongue, with every cell in his body being acutely aware of the lie. He does feel that itch, or else he wouldn’t be dabbling in the drugs trade on the side.

He used to head up government organisations, coordinate mass scale operations working simultaneously on different sides of the globe. He used to have the clearance to access almost anything, to do almost anything, anything from saving a religious figurehead to ordering assassinations in the name of national security. It only takes a few whispered words in the ears of the people in charge for a department head to be replaced, done and dusted in a matter of hours with a military efficiency that Waverly used to admire. 

He has a different feeling towards it now that he’s on the other side. There’s not much you can do working against that sort of efficiency, for all that he’s tried to. 

The man waits patiently, expecting Waverly to cave. When he doesn’t, he fills in the blanks instead, changing tacks abruptly. “Someone has stolen my designs.”

The crispness of the sentence leaves no room for Waverly to ask what the designs are, and frankly as cool as this man might think he is coming across, most of him doesn’t even want to know, much less take this job.

“And you want me to…”

“I want you to steal them back.”

  
  
  


He may not have all the access that he once had, but he still has enough, and enough skill in order to work his way into systems in order to get the information that he needs.

The man gave him the alias of Rudi Brenner, an obviously fake name which Waverly didn’t care much to research further into. He was a low level engineer, who had designed some flashy designs which would save a company billions, and when he tried to present them to his boss, a rival company came and took off with them and were about to present them to the world as their own. 

A heartfelt story, but Waverly didn’t care much for that. He cared about righting a wrong, avenging the victim and making sure that everyone knew what had happened. 

But even when he was working for the government, he was just the man in charge. He knew how to direct people around, he knew how to coordinate them in order to achieve the best possible result. What he didn’t know was how to get out in the field and do it himself. He had lost that ability a long time ago. 

All that meant was that he needed a team.

The law dictated that this was a crime, even if Waverly didn’t necessarily agree. So in order to pull off a perfect crime, you needed criminals, and you needed good ones. 

He would only need three.

  
  
  


Gabriella Teller is the easiest of the three to find. She’s good but she’s painfully new to the game, and that sort of inexperience shows. It’s easy to tell when someone hasn’t been hunted by anyone more experiened than a desk jockey.

She’s got the intelligence to dabble in just about anything and come out on the other side with a decent result, no matter if she’s only started doing it that day. She’s a genius hacker and a fantastic mechanic and just as disinterested in both of those things that Waverly can’t determine which one is her career and which one is just a hobby to keep her occupied. 

The other problem is her youth, her desperation to live the life of the rich and famous that she would see so often in the media possessing her and using her skills in order to help her obtain it, with no care for the legality of it all. 

And as with every rich and famous barely legal adult, she has to show off her newly found wealth in order to establish to the rest of the rich and famous barely legal adults that she has it, and that she is here to stay. The best way to do that these days, is a party. 

It’s surprisingly easy for a middle aged man like him to sneak into the party, considering he is now surrounded with scantily-clad women and tuxedoed men sipping expensive vodka out of cheap tumblers and trying to make themselves feel like they’re more important than they really are. And he should know, considering that in his youth he used to be the same, living it up with his title and his old money. 

Waverly finds Gaby Teller as he comes to know her hiding away in her study, tinkering on a little something in front of her. He shuts the door quietly behind him, but the noise from the lock clicking is enough for her to look up in fright, the screwdriver in her hand dropping heavily onto the desk. 

He doesn’t even have to flash a badge in order to get her scared, his posture and his suit and his age all factors to make him look like a government agent. 

“Are you here to arrest me?”

“I’m afraid not my dear. I’m here to ask for your help.”

“But aren’t you…”

He knows what she’s implying, and decides to go for a half truth to placate her instead. “I’m a contractor, and I think you have the right set of skills in order to help me in my job.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“I walk you past the DEA agents who are currently swarming the lower levels of this party and you and I both walk out unscathed. 

She visibly pales at this, and although it was probably a cruel thing of him to do to blackmail her into coming with him. He moves over to the window and looks out of it to see the red and blue flashing lights, turning back to face her so that she can clearly see the reflection on his face and to know that he isn’t kidding. 

He watches as she gulps heavily before nodding, her hands shakily opening a side drawer and pocketing a USB in it. “Okay.” 

It is the suit and the age and the posture from years of being official that allows them to just slide past, with Waverly holding her tightly by the arm and walking her past the DEA agents who are now dealing with drunk girls sitting with large suit jackets draped messily around their shoulders, crying about something or other. It’s enough to slip her into the nondescriped black station wagon which he drove her, nodding politely to the other suits as they passed. It’s even enough for them to speed off into the night. 

“Is it just me you need?”

“Two more.”

“Who?”

“An art thief and an assassin.”

  
  
  


The art thief in question is a man named Napoleon Solo, famous for lifting Van Gogh’s and Monet’s out of the most heavily armoured museums in the country and making it out alive. The odd thing about this art thief, compared to all the many others in the world, is the fact only once in a blue moon does a painting stolen by him turn up on the black market.

Waverly has never been able to determine whether he is just that good at fencing stolen goods or that he steals things for their beauty and not for the money and keeps them all for himself just to look at them. 

He’s cocky too, which is why it’s easy to lure him out with the gift. Napoleon Solo has never been one to resist the high life, and so an art auction with a valuable piece pilfered from Waverly’s own private collection and with a high profile guest list that it would take months to even get on the waiting list, he knows that will be enough to ensure that he is there. 

Waverly corners him in the bathroom. Napoleon pales the moment they make eye contact through the mirror, his body going rigid as he stands up straighter. 

“I’ve heard there’s a job that you’re working. An off the books job.”

“Maybe this time we can be on the same side Solo,” Waverly shoots back.

He knows that they are both thinking about the same moment, as Waverly watched his colleague bend Napoleon’s head down so that it wouldn’t hit the top of the door of a police car. For three years he headed up art crimes, which was almost religiously devoted to catching him.

They were both aware that the other knew about their role in those tumultuous three years, and right now that was the only thing that was standing 

“I seriously doubt that you would ever go crooked,” Solo replies with a laugh.

“I haven’t. I’m just recruiting already crooked people to do my work for me.”

“How do I know that this isn’t a con, and the moment that I walk out of this bathroom with you I won’t get arrested?”

“You and Teller go back.

“Gaby has been in the game for less than a year. She’s good, but she’s too trusting.”

“But you still trust her.”

Napoleon nods shortly. “No idea why.” Suddenly, his eyes widen, as he takes in Waverly again. “That painting was from your own house, wasn’t it? That means you’re out.”

Waverly has no idea how Solo knows that the painting came from him and not from some government reserve of confiscated goods hidden in the middle of god knows where. But he also knows its enough to make him interested.

These days, Napoleon Solo doesn’t do anything for the money or for the fame, or probably even for the goods that he’s stealing. He does it for the thrill, a thrill which fades more and more every time. Now that Waverly has confirmed that this isn’t a con and he won’t get arrested for it, at least he won’t get arrested because of Waverly, he knows that this is enough of a new thing that maybe the thrill will be good enough for him. 

Napoleon nods at him through the mirror, before turning around and nodding again, leaning against the sink and bracing himself with his hands. “Alright then. What am I stealing?”

“Blueprints.”

“Physical copy?”

“Afraid not.”

“Is there a reason why you want my help then?”

“You’re both a good thief and good eye candy.”

Napoleon’s face breaks out in a grin, wide and more genuine than Waverly’s ever seen from him before. He gets up and starts moving out of the bathroom, Waverly falling in line behind him effortlessly. “Fantastic.”

  
  


Illya Kuryakin is the last on his list. All it takes to lure him into his little gang is an exchange of cash, which he gets Gaby to wire in from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. 

He is property, owned by a Russian man who is claiming a family debt that stretches back into the era of the KGB. He turns up at the office building silently, sits with his hands clasped over his knees and his head bowed, and waits quietly for someone to come and guide him to where he is supposed to go. 

They are all there when he walks in, Gaby shutting the door behind him and making sure that it is firmly locked so he has nowhere to go if he tries to leave. He looks them up and down, assessing them one by one in order to try and determine what the hell he has just walked into. 

“I work alone,” he says simply. It could be an apology, but there’s no emotion behind the words. It’s just a simple statement. 

“Not this time you dont’t,” Napoleon says cheerfully, grinning at him and slapping him on the shoulder heartily. “You’ve been paid for, and so you’re part of this team until we are done.”

Illya glowers, but he doesn’t say a word. A part of Waverly feels bad about the fact that he has no choice in this, a bigger part of him knows that this team needs a hitter like Illya. 

And man, he is absolutely legendary. 

Few people even know his name; Waverly only having the privilege to read int in classified files due to the high ranking that he used to possess. The man has no confirmed kills, a question mark beside his name on every file that. No MO, no special tells to be able to pin a crime on him, he is as good as sand between the fingers of anyone who tries to hunt him down. If you can provide the money there is no questions asked, no crime too big or too small. He is capable of it all.

Perhaps recruiting Illya Kuryakin was overkill for something small like this, but Waverly didn’t sit in on enough meetings about the man not to know that he only ever worked alone, but perhaps that was not by choice, but instead a matter of circumstance. Perhaps the reason why any of them never worked as part of a team was because of the way of the world of crime, and that he could put them together in order to make a team that wasn’t built around crimes, but instead correcting injustices in such a harsh world.

And perhaps, he was being too naive and hopeful in an unforgiving world that he could bring a team of polar opposite people together by doing just one job. But just the thought of it was keeping him awake at night, because oh how he wanted it to work.

Napoleon claps in order to bring everyone back to attention. “Alright, let’s get to work then.”

  
  
  


He drops them off in the same nondescript black car at the front of the building. There’s an earpiece in his ear, connected to each of theirs. The clock on the dashboard of the car reads 01:54. Waverly doesn’t linger there for long, and neither do they, him speeding off around the corner and them up the building.

Napoleon has never felt the way he’s feeling before on a job, a weird mixture of anticipation, excitement and awkwardness. He can only guess that the other two people standing on the roof with him are feeling the same. 

“Are you sure that can support your weight?” Gaby says, pinging the rope. Illya grins down at the floor, but when he looks up there is a tell tale blush on his face. Napoleon grins at the two of them, but there is a sinking feeling in his stomach which he can’t place. Or maybe it’s in his heart. He doesn’t know which.

“Of course. This is very strong.”

Napoleon is about to rappel down the side of the building, cut a neat hole in one of the glass windows and stealth his way into the building, a plan that Gaby only thought existed in spy movies. He then has to override the protocols in the lift so that they can easily get in without being noticed, and then Illya is to escort her into the server room so she can lift the plans out from the mainframe and then the three of them can get out of there as quickly as they can. According to the database she had had to hack the night before, the only security in the building was through the front entrance, and they were relying on CCTV in order to keep thieves out. It was as easy as setting a photo as the visual on the screen the guards were looking at in order to solde that issue.

Watching Napoleon slide in through the window from her position leaning over the side of the building makes her heart race with anticipation, something she has never really felt on a job before. Maybe it’s because she’s never had a proper job, her only goals being driven by her ego and her own boredom. 

The two of them don’t wait long until they hear a ding, the elevator doors sliding open in front of them. 

Illya doesn’t talk much on the way down. And it’s a long way down. He just kind of stands there with his hands clenched in front of his body, his head bowed. He looks intimidating. 

The doors open to lead onto a corridor, but Illya seems to know where he’s going, because he takes two lefts and a right in order to get them into a room. Gaby instinctively reaches for the door, but Illya stops her by just stretching out his hand. He waits for a moment before the tiny light on the side turns off, before stepping forward and opening the door himself. 

“Heat scanner on the door handle,” he says by way of explanation.

“Really?”

“No.”

Gaby blushes, trailing after him as they walk inside. When they get there though, she looks around to see all the latest computer models and gadgets sitting in a semicircle around the room. This is her domain; this is where she rules. 

Illya gestures to the computer, but instead of coming across in an aggressive sort of hurry up way that Gaby thinks he means it, its more sincere and small, and there’s a sort of twinkle in his demeanour. 

It doesn’t take her long to find what she is looking for, because her engineering background gives her enough experience to be able to tell what the fuck plane blueprints are supposed to look like. She only gives the first page of each of them a quick glance, dragging and dropping them into a USB which she has plugged into the monitor. It’s a little weird going old school with the USB, but apparently there is 300k each payment for the successful completion of this, and so it feels a little better to have the files on something permanent which can’t be touched instead of leaving it unsecure up in a cloud. She doesn’t doubt her encryption skills and she knows that theoretically it would be fine to leave it up there, but still. A physical copy never hurt anyone. 

After about ten minutes of scouring the files for things that could potentially be it, Illya made a tsking sound, indicating that it was time to bust out of here. She held her finger up, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist, the pressure behind it making her flinch.

“What?”

“Somebody knew we were coming.”

“Shit.”

She can hear the footsteps heavy on the upper floors, moving around frantically, and Gaby knows that it won’t be long before they make their way down. 

“What do we do?”

“We use all the resources that we have at our disposal.” Illya taps on his earpiece once. “There’s a problem.”

Waverly immediately is in her ear, asking a quick “what is it” before Illya is telling him about the guards.

“Where are they?”

“I can hear six on the floor above.” How he can distinguish that from footsteps Gaby might never know. 

“Shit,” Napoleon curses on the other line. 

“What?”

“None of you idiots would know, considering none of you are American, but tonight is the NBA playoffs. They don’t know you’re here, they’re doing the required walkthrough an hour early so that they can watch the game.”

Gaby can hear Waverly run a hand through his hair on the other side of the line. “Okay. That means we are going to have to improvise. Napoleon, hack into the security and tell me where they are.”

“One step ahead of you. They’re coming down the stairwell, which leads right on to where Chop Shop and the Red Peril are.”

“Do not call me that,” Illya hisses indignatly over the line. Everyone ignores him. 

“Okay so they’re moving-”

There’s a crackle on the other end of the line, as the guard’s radio hooks into theirs. The only words that Gaby can make out are security breach, but thats enough for her to know what is going on. She knows that the rest of them heard it too, because before she knows it she is up and moving. Waverly speaks again, but the pounding in her ears makes it impossible to hear what he has to say. Illya stops her again before she can get far. 

“Stay here. Look busy.” 

“What? Why?”

Her protests go unheard, because before she knows it, Illya has slipped away out of her perview. As much as every bone in her body is screaming to cut her losses and run before she is caught up in this mess, Waverly’s reassuring voice in her ear is telling her to do the same thing that Illya just told her, which means that whatever is going on they must have a plan.

“You really want her to just sit there? The guards are right on top of her!” Solo says over the radio. Okay so maybe she should have just cut her losses and run, but right now she doesn’t have that option, because the door behind her is swinging open, to reveal what looks to be four guns and behind them four men. The guns make a cocking noise.

“Hold it right there. Turn around with your hands in the air please.”

She tries her best to keep the smile off of her face when she sees him sneak up behind, but none of the guards seem to notice him. If he wasn’t on her side right now either she would be deathly afraid of him, because the efficiency which he took them all out with, slamming two against a wall and using the other one to forcibly headbutt the last guard, should have scared her.

His mouth quirks up into what should be a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s what I do.”

Gaby’s inexperience might be showing now, but with two more guards left she doesn’t really know how the hell they are going to get out of here. They took the elevator down into here, surely it wasn’t going to be that easy to get out. 

“Get to the lift and get down to the ground,” Waverly’s voice crackles in her ear. Or maybe it was.

When they get into the lift, Napoleon appears out of nowhere, clutching a duffle bag in his right hand and dropping it on the floor in front of them. “Time for Plan B.”

“Technically speaking I think this might be Plan K.”

What is in the duffle bag are clothes, businessy looking and definitely not what she would normally wear. It doesn’t look like there is any shame in this elevator either, because the moment the doors shut behind them both Illya and Napoleon are shedding their cat burglar outfits in exchange for something more high class. 

The two men she is sharing the lift with have enough decency to turn around when she changes, which is a nice touch. 

Napoleon looks comfortable in his suit, like its the clothes that he is meant to wear, but Illya looks awkward and jumbled. The moment the elevator doors open though, it’s like it never happened.

She doesn’t know how the three of them walk through in their business suits at what could be four in the morning, but when a guard approaches them Illya just flashes a card in his face, and the guard backs off immediately with a few mumbled sorry’s.

Waverly is waiting out the front in the same car. She’s catching onto the game now though, because although she may recognise the car the plates have been changed, creating less suspicion. The three of them pile in the back, and before they know it, they are speeding off into the night. 

The files feel heavy around her neck, so she gets rid of them by pressing them into Waverly’s palm instead. 

  
  
  


Her heart is racing like mad by the time they get to the park. Napoleon has a secure dropbox to deposit the files in tomorrow, and once that’s done she should be receiving a payment of around 300k to sit in her bank account, making her a much richer woman than she was when she woke up.

They all know that none of the rest of them did this for the money, but the topic is avoided. Instead, the conversation is limited to how this was a one time job, and that they all worked alone. She could tell that even Waverly believed it. 

But trust Napoleon to ruin that attempt at an easy farewell. “Anyone else notice how hard we rocked last night?”

“One show only,” Illya says curtly. “No encores.”

“One show only,” Gaby echoes. “I guess this is goodbye.”

They all exchange their pleasantries before walking off in separate directions into the night, Gaby’s heart hurting not because of the fact that they were saying goodbye, but instead mourning what perhaps could have been, a team that worked together all of the time. Napoleon had put the idea in her head now, and there wasn’t much she could do to make it go. 

She sits in a bar and watches the sun rise in front of her, nursing a whiskey.

  
  
  


The next afternoon, Napoleon and Illya are holding a gun to each others head’s, Gaby caught in the middle, looking at Waverly with panic in her eyes. He just shrugs at her, laughing.


End file.
